SamDBL wrote:I don't really remember what this band sounds like. I think I had a split 7" with them and some other highly-praised piece of shit band that was supposed to be the second coming of a new era of hardcore. I only remember that it represented about the time I stopped listening to current (at the time) hardcore releases. And generally began feeling 'meh' about the whole genre.
xxxMidgexxx wrote:But perhaps I just love drone stuff in general.
JGJR wrote:I love them, especially the stuff before the Lp. The Lp is really good, but definitely a step down. After that, they have moments, but it seemed like they were deliberately putting out far shittier records to piss off their fans tbh. Their best stuff is all on 7"s, comps, their demo, etc. And it's silly to me to think anyone thinks they can't play given Adam's guitar playing. scannest is right. Don't confuse not your cup of tea with incompetence. I never got to see them, though. I remember wanting to go really badly when they played Cook College in 1991 (I eventually attended Cook starting in 1993 and booked a few shows there), but I didn't have my license yet and couldn't find a ride since I'd just moved to NJ from Louisiana before my junior year of high school.
the mean wrote:Saw them a bunch of times, they toured a lot. They were great. Love the early stuff, the LP is pretty great, and "Poland" from the final 10" is one of their better songs. "Mary and Child" could have been written today with all the abortion restrictions being put in place right now.
xxxMidgexxx wrote:But perhaps I just love drone stuff in general.
jaybird wrote:JGJR wrote:I love them, especially the stuff before the Lp. The Lp is really good, but definitely a step down. After that, they have moments, but it seemed like they were deliberately putting out far shittier records to piss off their fans tbh. Their best stuff is all on 7"s, comps, their demo, etc. And it's silly to me to think anyone thinks they can't play given Adam's guitar playing. scannest is right. Don't confuse not your cup of tea with incompetence. I never got to see them, though. I remember wanting to go really badly when they played Cook College in 1991 (I eventually attended Cook starting in 1993 and booked a few shows there), but I didn't have my license yet and couldn't find a ride since I'd just moved to NJ from Louisiana before my junior year of high school.
I like lots of raw, thrashy hardcore bands... Negative Approach, Neon Christ, Life Sentence, etc. ... Born Against is just incredibly sloppy and all over the place compared to those bands IMO... while none of the other bands I mentioned could be cited as virtuoso musicians, you can tell that they were well-rehearsed units when they went into the studio to record... or at least took enough time in the studio to get a good, solid take... Born Against's stuff always sounded to me like they just learned the songs maybe 15 minutes before rolling tape, and just went with the first take. Maybe there's something to that approach that has its own subjective merit, but I don't think you can honestly say they spent any more than the absolute bare minimum amount of time necessary to record their stuff. I think that's objectively shitty musicianship, even by the admittedly low standards of hardcore as a genre, and demonstrative of their focus being on other "externalities" to music like the things SamDBL talked about...just my 2¢, ymmv, etc.
xxxMidgexxx wrote:But perhaps I just love drone stuff in general.
JGJR wrote:jaybird wrote:JGJR wrote:I love them, especially the stuff before the Lp. The Lp is really good, but definitely a step down. After that, they have moments, but it seemed like they were deliberately putting out far shittier records to piss off their fans tbh. Their best stuff is all on 7"s, comps, their demo, etc. And it's silly to me to think anyone thinks they can't play given Adam's guitar playing. scannest is right. Don't confuse not your cup of tea with incompetence. I never got to see them, though. I remember wanting to go really badly when they played Cook College in 1991 (I eventually attended Cook starting in 1993 and booked a few shows there), but I didn't have my license yet and couldn't find a ride since I'd just moved to NJ from Louisiana before my junior year of high school.
I like lots of raw, thrashy hardcore bands... Negative Approach, Neon Christ, Life Sentence, etc. ... Born Against is just incredibly sloppy and all over the place compared to those bands IMO... while none of the other bands I mentioned could be cited as virtuoso musicians, you can tell that they were well-rehearsed units when they went into the studio to record... or at least took enough time in the studio to get a good, solid take... Born Against's stuff always sounded to me like they just learned the songs maybe 15 minutes before rolling tape, and just went with the first take. Maybe there's something to that approach that has its own subjective merit, but I don't think you can honestly say they spent any more than the absolute bare minimum amount of time necessary to record their stuff. I think that's objectively shitty musicianship, even by the admittedly low standards of hardcore as a genre, and demonstrative of their focus being on other "externalities" to music like the things SamDBL talked about...just my 2¢, ymmv, etc.
I'm not a musician, so I won't argue anything technical here, but I'm just wondering how awful they can be if folks are still listening to them today and if (at least IMO) their songs still hold up and I still have them stuck in my head 3 decades or more after they were released. No one here is suggesting that they're Steely Dan (who I love, btw) in terms of recording and musicianship, but rather I do truly believe the sloppiness (at least on the surface), recording style, et al. was a conscious stylistic choice, at least up to a point given their limitations.
I mean I think that noisy edge they had spanwed all of the Gravity stuff (see also the 2nd Heroin 7", but also stuff like Antioch Arrow, et al.), as did NOU/DLJ (who scannest also mentioned), then called emo believe it or not, as well as stuff like Assfactor 4, Mohinder, Angel Hair, et al.
the mean wrote: "Poland" from the final 10" is one of their better songs.
Gary wrote:Incredible band that still holds up.
prankrec wrote:I think the crucial thing forgotten in evaluation of 90's music versus music of the 1980's is the bottom dropped out completely of Hardcore or whatever except for really commercial ends of it ( pop punk, mosh metal) , so a lot of the places to perform, record and just get stuff done were far more DIY than the rock club or auditoriums that would host 80's punk bands. The elevation of professionalism is different if you're playing basements and living rooms, but it doesn't totally go away, it's just harder when things are smaller and there's less Monety too. To Me, bands like Born Against and Man Is the Bastard....you kinda had to be there, because their presence and how confrontational or odd their lives shows could get was a huge part of understanding the band.
The 90's punk scene is a confusing decade if you look at it like the 80's: there's no one central thread or overarching central theme beyond the bands that exploded to majors, it presaged how society in general got "whatever you like" there's hundreds of micro scenes of small bands doing different sounds for everyone's tastes. It also of course made for a lot of garbage to wade through, but I honestly believe it's victory wasn't as much artistic as forwarding that DIY spirit of it's explosion of zines, records, websites, etc, which was then applied to a lot of things across society - from clothing ( Etsy,etc) to craft beer.
Anyway, I'm obvious biased about Born Against. "Nine Patriotic Hymns" to me is the last great 1980's hardcore record. The lyrics are still awesome, the music still powerful. It's discordant, but also has that same NY low end rumbling that Nausea "Extinction" has. If you listen to the two back to back, they sound really similar. But it's also at a point when everything got more discordant and deconstructed.
prankrec wrote:I think the crucial thing forgotten in evaluation of 90's music versus music of the 1980's is the bottom dropped out completely of Hardcore or whatever except for really commercial ends of it ( pop punk, mosh metal) , so a lot of the places to perform, record and just get stuff done were far more DIY than the rock club or auditoriums that would host 80's punk bands. The elevation of professionalism is different if you're playing basements and living rooms, but it doesn't totally go away, it's just harder when things are smaller and there's less Monety too. To Me, bands like Born Against and Man Is the Bastard....you kinda had to be there, because their presence and how confrontational or odd their lives shows could get was a huge part of understanding the band.
The 90's punk scene is a confusing decade if you look at it like the 80's: there's no one central thread or overarching central theme beyond the bands that exploded to majors, it presaged how society in general got "whatever you like" there's hundreds of micro scenes of small bands doing different sounds for everyone's tastes. It also of course made for a lot of garbage to wade through, but I honestly believe it's victory wasn't as much artistic as forwarding that DIY spirit of it's explosion of zines, records, websites, etc, which was then applied to a lot of things across society - from clothing ( Etsy,etc) to craft beer.
Anyway, I'm obvious biased about Born Against. "Nine Patriotic Hymns" to me is the last great 1980's hardcore record. The lyrics are still awesome, the music still powerful. It's discordant, but also has that same NY low end rumbling that Nausea "Extinction" has. If you listen to the two back to back, they sound really similar. But it's also at a point when everything got more discordant and deconstructed.
xxxMidgexxx wrote:But perhaps I just love drone stuff in general.
prankrec wrote: Nausea's "Extinction"
prankrec wrote:I really recommend listening to "Nine Patriotic" and Nausea's "Extinction" back to back, because it shows these bands weren't;t in a vacuum and were all influencing each other.
xxxMidgexxx wrote:But perhaps I just love drone stuff in general.
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